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'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Before I start, I'd like to give a warning to anyone reading this. Many people, especially on the internet, find semantic arguments to be inconsequential and pretentious. Little is more common on an internet message board than to see an argument dismissed as "just semantics". What follows is an entry about nothing but semantics written by a guy who is obsessed with semantics, so don't read any further if you're one of those people who find discussions of semantics tedious and annoying. What's more, please don't leave a comment unless you're prepared to have a dry conversation about words with the guy who corrects your use of literally on Facebook. I am that guy. You have been warned.

Aikido is a word that carries a lot of baggage with it. It is, in some mouths, the name of a particular Japanese martial art, but there are many people who seem to want it to be so much more than that, who are not satisfied to see the word confined to the dojo.

This is, as far as I can tell, a phenomenon unique to aikido in the martial arts world. None of my taekwondo buddies ever tried to convince me that the movements of a dancer or a golfer might be just as validly called taekwondo as our martial art, but these exact claims have been made to me of aikido by some extremely knowledgeable aikidoists.

Much of this kind of thinking must be credited to aikido's founder Morihei Ueshiba, in whose writings we find such cryptic lines as: "The Art of Peace has no form--it is the study of the spirit," and: "Any movement can be an aikido technique." Clearly, Ueshiba intended aikido to be more than just a martial art.

This is, in many ways, a very good thing. Ueshiba wanted us to learn more from him than rolling, throwing, and twisting wrists: he sought to show us, through the lens of his martial art, a way to live and move in harmony with the world around us. And there's certainly no need to explain why some more of that in this world would be a good thing.

For all that, though, Ueshiba's vague and idealistic explanations of aikido create some rather daunting semantic problems. First of all, a word for something that "has no form" and which can be applied to "any movement" is a word that has very little meaning of its own. Furthermore, it's hard to justify using such a word as the name for a particular martial art with a particular lineage and technical focus.

Word nerd that I am, such semantic problems bother me more than they bother most people, so I have always tried to use the word aikido as specifically as possible. When I say (or write) the word aikido, I mean Morihei Ueshiba's martial art, whose primary technical basis is Takeda's Daito-ryu aikijujutsu and the practice of which Ueshiba intended to serve as an expression of the principle of aiki.

Some spiritualists might find a definition like mine too confining, and some traditionalists might think it diverges too far from the founder's own way of thinking. The inevitable question is: can't someone who is dancing, negotiating, or playing a sport be closer to the the principles of aikido than someone who is practicing Daito-style grappling techniques? It's a reasonable question, one that has been issued to me as a challenge by many people who know much more about aikido than I do.

My answer has less to do with aikido than with language, and so I think C.S. Lewis, one of modern history's great authorities on language, can make my point better than I can. In the preface to his book Mere Christianity, Lewis details the demise of a useful word:

Quote:

The word gentleman originally meant something recognisable; one who had a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone 'a gentleman' you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact. If you said he was not 'a gentleman' you were not insulting him, but giving information...But then came people who said--so rightly, charitably, spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully--'Ah, but surely the important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but the behaviour? Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman should?...' They meant well. To be honourable and courteous and brave is of course a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same thing...To call a man 'a gentleman' in this new, refined sense becomes, in fact, not a way of giving information about him, but a way of praising him: to deny that he is 'a gentleman' becomes simply a way of insulting him. When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker's attitude to that object...A gentleman, once it has been spiritualized and refined out of its old coarse, objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker likes.

The aforementioned spiritualists and traditionalists are, of course, absolutely right when they say that aikido's principles are far more important than its lineage and its techniques. But I think they cause a great deal of linguistic trouble when they decide that the principles, rather than the lineage and the techniques, ought to be the basis for how we use aikido as a word.

If I say, according to my understanding of aikido principles, that the dancer who moves in flawless harmony with his partner is performing aikido, and furthermore that the martial artist in the dojo who does not grasp the underlying truths of his art is not performing aikido, then what have I communicated? Since there is no clearly articulated and agreed upon list of the principles of aikido, all I have really managed to say is that I approve of the way one task has been performed but not the other. In that case, aikido has, as Lewis explains above, ceased to be a term of description and become merely a term of praise.

If, on the other hand, the word aikido simply names a martial art that was founded by Morihei Ueshiba and gets most of its technical curriculum from Daito-ryu, I can use it to communicate, with reasonable specificity, a particular kind of activity. As an added bonus, this "coarse, objective" definition does not require any judgments on my part about what is and what is not a real expression of the true principles of aikido (judgments I would not feel the least bit qualified to make).

At this point, other objectors are likely to chime in, arguing that since there is no agreement about which styles have truly preserved their Ueshiba roots and which technical curricula are correct, even the kind of definition I suggest will not produce universal agreement about what is and is not aikido. These objectors are correct, but their objection is ultimately irrelevant. My purpose here is not to extinguish all discussion about what fits the definition of aikido, only to provide a definition that allows us to have the discussion. If aikido is no more than a set of subjective principles, there is no discussion to be had.

If I understand him correctly, I disagree with CS Lewis that the practical meaning has left the use of the term. It's simply changed...as all language does, given a long enough timeline. Reading up quickly on the etymology, even his own definition is too vague depending on which time period we're using as the context. Apparently "gentleman" denoted something even more specific than his definition.

Quote:

Wikipedia... wrote:

in its original and strict signification, denoted a man of the lowest rank of the English gentry, standing below an esquire and above a yeoman.

I am not an expert in linguistics by any means, but per the small variety of courses I've been exposed to, one of the hallmarks of language is its tendancy to change over time. I agree with the idea that terms have to have a common basis or it doesn't do much good at conveying the meaning, but ultimately I don't think we can control others' usages because of my understanding on how people acquire and apply meaning. We can invite them to share our own application and understanding, but it's a "leading horse to water" situation.
In my TESL courses the material was presented by way of the Constructivist lense wherein the meaning of things is developed largely through the process of application. I rather like this approach because I think it reflects the natural way things like semantics arise. This doesn't mean the term "cat" can mean "dog" so much as "cat" will mean whatever it is the user has acquired through the process of learning, and that the meaning will naturally shift or refine over time as the process continues. With this in mind, it becomes less important to stress precision of terms than competence in applying and explaining one's comprehension...which relates somewhat to what Chris said earlier regarding the need for more qualifiers. Acquisition of meaning/semantics is something that is necessarily filtered through the individuality of the agent applying them.
Hopefully I expressed the above well enough (and that I even understand it well enough, for that matter), but based on it, I believe the term Aikido will necessarily be different based on who is practicing it since their individual complexities will affect their comprehension and expression of it. This is why for me, the term usually just denotes the kind of jujutsu training inspired by O Sensei's practice and teaching. This leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation based on personal proclivities, allowing me to refer to many practices that often look radically different.

If I understand him correctly, I disagree with CS Lewis that the practical meaning has left the use of the term. It's simply changed...as all language does, given a long enough timeline. Reading up quickly on the etymology, even his own definition is too vague depending on which time period we're using as the context. Apparently "gentleman" denoted something even more specific than his definition.

That is correct, but I don't think that changes Lewis' point. A word that once meant something specific now means something vaguely good. That's really not all that bad in this case, since the postmodern world has little use for a variety of terms for inherited nobility, but aikido is still alive and well today. We cannot afford for the name of our art to become a word that only means something vaguely good.

Quote:

I am not an expert in linguistics by any means, but per the small variety of courses I've been exposed to, one of the hallmarks of language is its tendancy to change over time. I agree with the idea that terms have to have a common basis or it doesn't do much good at conveying the meaning, but ultimately I don't think we can control others' usages because of my understanding on how people acquire and apply meaning. We can invite them to share our own application and understanding, but it's a "leading horse to water" situation.

Of course it is. I can't command anyone to talk a certain way.

Quote:

In my TESL courses the material was presented by way of the Constructivist lense wherein the meaning of things is developed largely through the process of application. I rather like this approach because I think it reflects the natural way things like semantics arise. This doesn't mean the term "cat" can mean "dog" so much as "cat" will mean whatever it is the user has acquired through the process of learning, and that the meaning will naturally shift or refine over time as the process continues. With this in mind, it becomes less important to stress precision of terms than competence in applying and explaining one's comprehension...which relates somewhat to what Chris said earlier regarding the need for more qualifiers. Acquisition of meaning/semantics is something that is necessarily filtered through the individuality of the agent applying them.

There is no question that language changes over time as it is applied, and there is no question that this is a natural process and nothing is inherently wrong with it. But I don't think it necessarily follows that all changes are useful.

Quote:

Hopefully I expressed the above well enough (and that I even understand it well enough, for that matter), but based on it, I believe the term Aikido will necessarily be different based on who is practicing it since their individual complexities will affect their comprehension and expression of it. This is why for me, the term usually just denotes the kind of jujutsu training inspired by O Sensei's practice and teaching. This leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation based on personal proclivities, allowing me to refer to many practices that often look radically different.

I actually like this definition a lot. It communicates something specific without making judgments about whose aikido is right or wrong.